One Kunai
by Demeter1
Summary: It's not her fairytale ending. But it's an ending. Sakura and her circle of dead.


**"One Kunai"  
**

**Demeter**

******Disclaimer:**All rights and privileges of Naruto characters, objects and plots are property and trademarks of Masashi Kishimoto, Shonen Jump, and associated parties. The author claims no legal responsibility for problems associated with using this work. The original story, relationships, and characters found within the fic are property of Demeter.

******Rating:**PG13

******Warnings:** character-death, slightly AU. Written before the infamous Ch.306

* * *

Sakura is nineteen years old when she thrusts a kunai, all glitter and bright with channeled chakra, into Sasuke's blackguard heart. Only, it wasn't Sasuke anymore, it was Orochimaru and he was too raw, too thin, too wickedly happy to be dear Sasuke-kun and she doesn't shed any tears. She's killed so many, what was another person's blood on her hands? Certainly not for a man who's a traitor three times over.

The battlefield is sparse and can barely be called that. Everyone is dead, her fellow teammates, his followers, and was it just the two of them and she'd discovered one vital, unbelievable weak point. Orochimaru might now own Sasuke's body, but the reflexes of muscles and movements honed by years of obsession were not so easily conquered like a snake-master might think.

Orochimarusasuke hesitates.

It's only for a moment. Barely a tenth of a heartbeat. A tenth of _her_ heartbeat.

But it's enough. It's enough for her kunai to glide smooth and perfect over the impossibly wide chasm between them and it goes through tender young flesh; young flesh Orochimaru had spent so much energy to acquire.

There might be irony? But the thought escapes her. Because Orochimarusasuke is dead on the yellowing grass and he grins at the sky. Still, Sakura does not cry. She has no tears for a traitor _three_ times over and Sasuke is not hers, not anymore. He's a missing-nin. He betrayed Konoha in an act that ripped a ragged hole among the ranks. Is he to be pitied? Is he to be hated? Is he to be feared or hunted or should they be pragmatic? Should they try to get him back because he's the last Uchiha and ninja's _must_ be pragmatic in a world where treaties are rendered invalid the moment one leader dies and another is born?

Sakura gazes down at Orochimarusasuke. It's strange, he still _looks_ like Sasuke, she can't see much of a difference. She thinks and tries to remember who Sasuke was in her memories. There are lunchboxes and uneven-numbered bells, strange pride warped into a curse, rookies of unusual fame, a ramen stand encounter gone wrong, and it's odd but was her memories of Sasuke all connected to _events_? She supposes it could be true; humans were strange creatures compared to animals or even insects. Memory is an unreliable thing that throbs uncertainly in the background and there were several scrolls devoted to the establishment of faulty memory and the danger of depending on the memories of a single surviving ninja for a report. Even Kakashi, infallible as he is, can and did get things wrong.

So she looks at Orochimarusasuke and knows her memories of Sasuke-_kun_ are merely using moments familiar and kind to remind her of the good old times, when he wasn't an evil bastard, where she was still weak and unassuming. The small things are connecting to other insignificant moments to remind Sakura of what was instead of what is. The bad times are large and strangely underwhelming.

And even all that is tempered by happiness.

People scoff. But Sasuke, she believes, had been happy once. Before Itachi, after Itachi, happiness is not an absolute form. She could be happy for Naruto while Sasuke rampaged through shinobi ranks like a hot knife through butter. Naruto could laugh and tease Hinata even as his heart bled dark things whenever they came near the abandoned Uchiha compound. Sakura had celebrated her last birthday by killing three missing-nin (it was too easy and sometimes Sakura wonders when it became so simple slide her hands into still-beating flesh) before she'd gotten rip-roaring drunk with Ino and Kiba at a bar. Wasn't Sasuke as three when they tried to see under that mysterious black mask of Kakashi's? Were they not three, a team, seven, equal, weren't they, weren't they?

But wait.

This is not the time to think about it. So Sakura puts away her thoughts, tidies them up into a little box that would serve as a fishing pond on some later date, when she has some guilt for lure and a bottle of whisky as her lines. Oh yes, she would think of this later, so now. She must be a Konoha ninja.

Her hand is precise and it's slow, but she knows what she should do and Sakura never falters. She slices off a hand (the bone resists against the sharp edge of her medic knife, but a bit of chakra fixes the problem) and tucks it into her pouch like a baby doll. The blood has congealed though the color is funny and dark. The medic in her says that it's because there is no longer anything living within the blood cells but the twelve year old genin supposes it's a side effect of becoming Orochimaru.

She looks around, scans the area for a brief perimeter check. Her chakra channels open and they flow out in search for anything that might pose as a threat. She didn't kill Orochimarusasuke only to be offed by a lucky shot.

Her senses tingle - oh, how Ino would laugh at that comparison! - the edges wrap in around themselves and she can feel chakra, just the faintest bit, leak out of masks and shields. It's a bitter irony, but she can sense others so much faster - _better to kill, my dear_ - with medic skills than she ever did as a regular, run-by-the-mill kunoichi who was never special on her own terms.

With ease, she withdraws the chakra and waits, patient and calm. The feet of ANBU land soft in the clearing and voices start calling out orders. One detaches him-her-itself from the group and comes to kneel by her. Eyes gather in the scene, many dead, roughed up land, Orochimarusasuke with a kunai in his heart.

Sakura smiles.

The elite assassin chooses to pause and then say, "The Hokage commanded us to look for you and your team when neither returned."

Sakura stares at the mask of the ANBU - who was it under the mask? - and nods, slow and deliberate. She doesn't doubt the person knows her history with Sasuke. Everyone knows. Even the youngest genin-in-training knows about the oh-so tragic tale of Team 7 and the teammates who failed each other. Dear old Copy-Nin Kakashi who could never take on another team, the perverted Naruto who continues to run on the fringes of the village with Jiraiya, and even cold, distant Sakura who buries herself in medical texts and steps out of the hospital only to blink.

Then again, people might have forgotten all about her.

She didn't exactly go around in a blaze of glory. Medic-nin never do. They tend to fade into the background, they heal the hurt, save the wounded, let go of the dead, but their moments are overshadowed by the relief of battle nin who manage to survive this battle or that war. Medic-nin will pour out their lives, their souls for the single chance that one life might not fray at the threads right before their eyes. Too many fall through their hands to ever make it a comfortable profession but to be a medic-nin is to be the bowels of the village. They are not beautiful, they don't go out in blazes of glory. Their part is too often overlooked but they are ever needed. It no longer bothers her like it used to; recognition was essential for the infamous bingo book. Did she want to be hunted? Not really. Recognition was good and all, but it's not Sakura's style.

Not anymore.

But now she'll always be known as the kunoichi who took down Orochimarusasuke and just _who is she_? Historians will read up about her, dissect the minutiae of her life and argue whether it was the instruction of Copy Nin Kakashi or the Fifth Hokage who'd given her more strength. Fellow ninjas will secretly follow her training tactics, genin will aspire to be her, her name will never be sullied, never be spoken except with reverence and once upon a time, this is what Sakura wanted.

What she had wanted. What she had wished. And suddenly, it seems like they'd been wasted on what is now (was) the inevitable. Sakura hardly needs to bite her lip to keep the sting of tears back in her throat.

Sakura smoothes the imaginary lines from Orochimarusasuke's forehead.

The ANBU watches, impassive. She thinks about C-rank missions and ramen, bells and seals, tests and scrolls, about rivalry and flowers, it all jumbles up in her head and really, she forgets about the so-called big things in favor of the smaller moments. Sasuke and his vengeance that couldn't die, Naruto and his promise that can never be fulfilled, the words of Kakashi that rang false and Tsunade had warned her all those years ago that this would be the most likely result of her gamble.

It looks like she inherited her teacher's habit of bad luck.

Sakura still has many things in her life and so with a sentimental kiss (she doesn't think she'll ever outgrow that little girl in her who'd adored Sasuke more than the world) and she puts away the bells and rivalries and monsters, the blood and hands and weapons, and even the lingering taste of ramen shared by three. Rational minds rule and Sakura knows she'll try her best to forgive Sasuke for the rest of her life. Team 7 fades into a mostly pleasant memory.

She looks down at him and decides to keep her kunai embedded in his heart. It's the least - and all - that she can do for him. Konoha might be pragmatic and willing to negotiate.

But they would never place his name on the memorial stone.

**********- fin -**


End file.
